Life at Bellerbys College

Half-Term Holiday

Posted by Sam

Hello everybody.

I am Sam from Oxford, currently studying Business Foundation.  Let me introduce myself, I am from Hong Kong, finished my HKCEE half year ago and 18 years old.  I have been in England since September 2007.  Recently, I am awaiting offers of a place from universities in UK.

As mentioned, I am a Foundation student.  I am going to study at one of the top universities in United Kingdom.  I don’t think I will study in Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland though.  I am going to study a pure Economics course (L100) next academic year.  I sent my application to UCAS (if you don’t know what it is, use Wikipedia!) on 15th January.  I'm hoping to get three offers but haven't received anything for nearly three weeks.  I am becoming obsessive about checking UCAS. 

I have just finished my half-term holiday.  I changed my accommodation because I really want to have a quality sleep.  My previous roommate made the unwanted sound which is snoring during the night.  It is a drawback of having a shared room.  Nevertheless, it is a really good excuse when you are late in the morning.  Normally, no one would accept it though.

I had my IELTs test during my half term.  It is not a piece of cake and a bit unfair as there was echo in the hall when the candidates having the listening part.  Anyway, I exerted myself.

Apart from that, I was invited by Department of Economics and International Development of Bath University to go its open day.  I cannot say the campus is very modern.  However, the lecture theatre and the sports centre are the best in UK I have ever seen.  The sports centre can reach the national quality I suppose.

The lecturer gave a presentation about the department and the university.  Boring as it seems, the information is valuable.  As usual, some representatives guided us on a tour in the campus.  All in all, the trip was worth it.  There are scholarships available for Bellerbys Foundation students at Bath University I heard.  I am still thinking about it.

So, the mid-term results have been released. They weren't great but what I really want are just the marks for the English subject and IELTs.  There's no point worrying about the others too much. Whatever, prepare for the worst situation!

Last but not least, a point which is considerable is that the questionnaires for the teachers must be written truthfully and with the best hand-writing if you can.

One thing I want to share is the slogan hung on the wall in sport centre in Bath:

Vision without action is just a dream
Action without vision just passes the time
Vision with action can change the world

- Team Bath, University of Bath

How Hard it Can Be to Get a Visa

Posted by Ksenia

Happy Valentines Day everyone!  Hope you all had a great time!!

This week was marked by our short trip to London.  Actually me, three Chinese boys, and three girls – from Ukraine, Moldova and Russia are going to Italy this half-term as a part of United Nations Association of Bellerbys.  Our final destination is Rodi Garganico but we are flying through Milan and Bari.

Rodi (I believe you have never heard of it) is a small city on the cost in the south east of Italy. We are going with Mrs Arulraj and will be having a great time with Italian students from the local fashion college.  I will tell you everything about this trip in my next post (something to look forward to during the half term…. Ok, I understand you have some more exciting plans).

So we went to London to get our Italian visa.  And of course it was just impossible for me to go without doing something stupid.  Firstly the night before I did not bother to check my documents thoughtfully. As the result when I was already in lift ready to ran to the station (as usual I was “a bit” late) and I decided to check everything just to be sure… I realised that I forgot my passport (what may be cleverer? To go to embassy for a visa without a passport!)  So I ran back home, took my passport…and then I was not “a bit” late anymore, I was very seriously late!!!  (It was me who said to others not to be late in the first place).

That morning I made my personal record – I reached the Brighton station in less then 15 minutes. Usually it takes me about 25.  Finally I was just a “bit” late again.  Luckily we had already bought our tickets so we caught our train and everything seemed to be fine.  We all were a bit sleepy because we had to get up really early (our meeting at the station was arranged at 7 o’clock). We were happily chatting all the time and the train arrived on time. But it was just a beginning of the story…

Celebration of Festivals – Chinese New Year and Christmas

Posted by Shiny

6th February is the 2008 Chinese New Year.  Last year, the Chinese New Year was at weekend, so we had time to play and had dinner with Mr. Qin, the teacher who works in the Chinese Cultural Centre.  However, this year is quite special.  The Chinese New Year’s Eve is on 6th which doesn’t allow students to play truant.

After class, the Chinese students and Vietnamese students all vanished from college at a “thunder speed”.  After making a couple of phone calls back to China, I decided to go back home to cook my own dinner.  In the past, I usually spent the Chinese New Year with friends and classmates, but I think I gotta try a new style of life.  Some students decided to go to London for karaoke whilst some went for a dinner together.  Like us, other students just didn’t have a plan.  So instead, we spend our time at home.  We could go to CC (the Chinese Centre) to have dinner with some other people, but I just wanted to go back home to have a rest.

Compared with the Chinese New Year, Christmas seems to be much more popular.  This New Year reminded me of the all the Christmases I’ve ever experienced in the UK.  In 2006, we had a fantastic Xmas lunch with our host-family.  It can be seen from the photo that we had vegetables, stuffing, turkey, champagne and dessert for lunch.  We opened crackers and the housemother gave each of us a box of chocolate. 

One Week and a Bit More of My Life

Posted by Ksenia

Hello my dear readers!  Hope you are enjoying your time as much as do!  Before I forget – if you have something to say or to ask – please to not hesitate to leave comments.  I will be very happy to answer you!

Ok, last time I wrote that my mum was coming.  It was great!!  She was in Brighton for few days and every evening after college I went to meet her, we had a nice dinner in a restaurant and a long chat, of course!  Obviously I did not do much work, but my teachers were real angels – very understanding as usual.  On Friday we went to London by train.  That is very convenient, only 50 minutes and you are in London Victoria!  What did we do in London?  I think the answer is quite predictable…  Like every female human being, me and my mum love shopping!

But London is much more than just great shops – after visiting our favourite places we decided to find an unusual restaurant to eat.  I’ve been to London so many times but I could never find China Town, do not ask me why.  I am absolutely hopeless and never know were to go.  But this time we were well prepared, we followed the map and finally succeeded!  That is really a great part of the city which does not look British at all and there were so many restaurants there, that the choice was extremely difficult.  But the food was really worth it!

We also visited Tate Britain Gallery (something for our cultural development).  I was very pleased to see some paintings of Brighton.  One of them was done two centuries ago on the exact place where Brighton Pier is situated now.  It was such a strange feeling to see it…  I also really liked several pieces done by artist called Rossetti.  Surprisingly he was born in England, even though his family name sounds Italian.

One Week in January

Posted by Shiny

It was the last week of the January exams.  We have experienced a lot this week.  And it was indeed a busy week.

On Monday, in the afternoon, we had an awards ceremony of the United Kingdom Senior Mathematical Challenge.  This year our college really had a fabulous harvest.  We’ve got hundreds of certificates to hand out this year many of which are Gold Prize.  At least 25 candidates have received a gold certificate.  My ex-high schoolfellow Chen Jun has got the best prize at our college.  Some students believe that in the recent years, the mathematical level of Bellerbys may have gone up gradually year by year.

On Tuesday, I had a C4 exam, which was almost a doom.  I found out that I have got many answers wrong.  I was horribly frustrated after the exam as I think that I should never have a bad grade for an straightforward module.  I don’t really want to retake any modules in June since there would be loads of work then.  Nonetheless, “There is a crook in the lot of every one.” 

I went out of the library, attempting to comfort myself, but I just couldn’t calm down until I saw the “Table Tennis Club” going on.  Oscar and I went to join them in the exam hall without any hesitation.  We played with some Russian students.  Haven’t played the table tennis for ages, I really missed it.  At first I couldn’t play properly, and it was partially because the Russian students were skillful.  There is no doubt that the balls were a bit small and not like those for formal competition and the bats are not ideal enough either.  However I definitely enjoyed the game since I lost myself and utterly forgot the sadness of my painful exam memory.  Finally, I got some practice and I was able to compete with the Russian athletes.  Since then, it was a bit hard to judge who was better at playing.  The Table Tennis Club has enabled me to tackle my bad mood in time by doing some sports I like.  Hopefully soon students will be able to play basketball and badminton in the college too.

Great January

Posted by Ksenia

Hi again!

So, the first month of 2008 is coming to it's end.  Time for a short summary!

Until January 7th I was in Russia, it is so nice to be at home!  I visited all my relatives, went out with friends, went ice-skating, did some shopping, read books, listened to music, and did not think about studying at all.  So when I came back to Brighton my head was light and empty.  Thanks to my teachers, they were quite understanding...

The 18th was my birthday!!!!  I've just turned 17!  It was a great day; I received lots of presents, cards and greetings!  One more time I realized how wonderful are my friends and family.  In the evening we went out with my best friends to have a cup of tea and a piece of cake in the coffee shop and a good chat (see photos!).  As every girl I just LOVE sweets!

Of course there were some serious things as well!  I've already been to two meeting run by Mr Corcut for students who want to apply for Cambridge or Oxford. Obviously a chance to get there is very small, because they take only exceptional students, but I still feel that people should try.  Anyway it will be a good experience for us!  During these meetings students will give the audience a talk about the subject they want to study.  We have already had a very interesting one from Wang who started by saying that there is no randomness, so everything is our destiny and finished by stating that radioactive decay is random, so there is no destiny.  People were a bit confused but there was a good discussion afterwards.

I talked about GM products.  In my opinion it is a topic everyone has something to say about and people tend to think about this it a lot.  The following Monday there were two talks about economics.  Even though I do not understand anything about this subject I found them quite interesting and useful, especially a short discussion about happiness and its connection to economics!

There was one more event I need to mention - WTO Economics Adviser, Philippe Legrain lead a discussion on why he believes immigration is a good thing in our Exam hall!  He is really a great speaker, usually it is quite boring to listen to a person talking for more than an hour, but this time it was not!!  There were some very good questions from the audience as well, and Mr Legrain was very confident in answering them.  And free tea and biscuits were served (sometimes it is so easy to make people happy).  We met some Sussex University students; we will have a debate with them later this term.  Hope they will lose!

And just to finish this post - my mum is coming this Wednesday!!  I miss her very much so I am extremely happy now. And we are going to London for the weekend! I'm really looking forward to it!

Our Biggest Enemy

Posted by Shiny

Living in the UK, one of the biggest enemies is language.  If you don’t solve this problem, it will become a barrier to your life, just like the sands inside your shoes which makes you inconvenient and uncomfortable to move.

Undeniably, linguistic problems are really inevitable.  Having problems is not scary, because you can learn something from that.  But the thing is, sometimes we won’t learn things until we become a “clown”.

Just before Christmas, my housemate August caught a cold, so he went to a pharmacy to buy some medicine since he has almost eaten up the pills I had given to him.  He asked the shop assistant to get some medicine for him.  The shop assistant showed him a bottle of liquid, but August didn’t trust that kind of medicine.  So he told the assistant to get some other sorts of medicine.  Unfortunately he didn’t know how to say, so he asked, “Have you got something like candies?” “Can candy cure your cough?” asked the assistant.  August said, “No, I mean something you put into your mouth.”  The assistant said angrily, “Your mouth! Not my mouth!”  “OK!”  Finally August learnt a new word which is “oral administration.”